Blackswift Aircraft is Born; But Will it Survive?

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Blackswift Aircraft is Born; But Will it Survive?

The Pentagon's effort to build a hypersonic vehicle that takes off and lands like an aircraft – the proverbial "SR-72" – took a hesitant step out of the closet last week when the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the new project.

As DANGER ROOM previously reported, the program – now called the HTV-3X – is soon to be christened Blackswift. "The MOU is for the Blackswift program," Walker wrote in an e-mail.

The idea is to build on the related work on Falcon, according to DARPA. "Under the HTV-3X portion of Falcon, we're working on a conceptual design for combined cycle hypersonic vehicle that could take off and land like a plane," Walker wrote in an e-mail. "Our current intent is for this to become a separate program in FY 09 that would be known as 'Blackswift.'

All good news? Not necessarily. Apparently, there was some resistance in the Air Force to signing on the dotted line. For one, the price tag, which right now stands at $800 million to develop two prototype aircraft is quite high; though given other hypersonic efforts in the past, that estimate is likely to exceed $1 billion. The Air Force also questioned whether the engine – "combination turbine engine and ramjet*" –* is really the appropriate choice.

The intriguing question, however, is why DARPA wants to revisit the National Aerospace Plane (NASP), with all the problems that entailed. Blackswift may not be NASP, but it faces some of the same pitfalls (anybody remember how much NASP was going to weigh?). The mission for Blackswift is also unclear: it could be part of the global strike mission or a reconnaissance strike aircraft; and critics have pointed to obvious pitfalls there as well for a hypersonic aircraft.

One thing is certain: Blackswift is ambitious: DARPA Director Tony Tether expects it to do a barrel roll at Mach 6. Why do a barrel roll at Mach 6, you ask? I asked the same question. As one source familiar with the program put it: "Because Tony [Tether] decided that real airplanes do a barrel roll."